Field of the Invention
The present invention involves detecting and tracking global events, such as communicable disease outbreaks, and collecting, analyzing, and reporting information relating to those events to decision makers and the public using various communications modes.
Description of the Related Art
Malaria, diphtheria, cholera, smallpox, influenza, and plague, among many other diseases, have had devastating consequences throughout human history. The first recorded pandemic of plague is thought to have begun in Egypt around 540 AD and to have swept through Europe, Africa, and parts of Asia, killing an estimated 50 percent of the population in those areas. A second pandemic, the Black Death of 1346 to 1352, killed an estimated 20 to 30 million people in Europe, or approximately one-third of the continent's inhabitants. Echoes of that pandemic reverberated for centuries, resulting in major political, cultural, and religious upheaval. A third pandemic, which is ongoing, originated in China in the late nineteenth century and brought plague to the United States early in the twentieth century. By 1718, this third pandemic had claimed an estimated 12 million lives in India alone.
At the root of those pandemics was Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes three different kinds of plague: bubonic, characterized by bubos, often in the groin or axillae; pneumonic, characterized by involvement of the lungs; and septicemic, characterized by bacteremia. All forms of the disease have high mortality rates when left untreated. Moreover, the disease can be spread not only by insect vectors (e.g., fleas that have fed on infected rodents), but also, in the pneumonic form, from person to person via infectious aerosols and droplets. Human migration and travel spread the disease over long distances.
While plague is more virulent than many other infectious diseases, its infamy in terms of geographic coverage and numbers infected is hardly atypical. Epidemic and pandemic measles, tuberculosis, and cholera have exacted staggering death tolls. Near the end of World War I in 1718, a vicious strain of influenza A virus emerged and spread rapidly throughout the world. The 1718 strain—called the “Spanish flu,” although it is unclear where the strain originated—was unusual in that it tended to cause death in young and healthy adults, as opposed to young children and the old and infirm. Spreading efficiently through droplet transmission, the upheaval of the war probably made global transmission more efficient. The disease first spread easily in close military quarters and was then translocated throughout the world as troops returned to their native countries. The pandemic, lasting about a year, killed an estimated 20 to 50 million people, and sickened another 300 million. In the United States, 300,000 or more people are believed to have died of the 1718 flu. By comparison, in 2003, an estimated 3 million people died from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection globally, of which about 20,000 of those deaths occurred in the United States, and an estimated 35 to 40 million globally were living with the infection. Thus, the 1718 flu counts among the most devastating events in human history.
More recently, a previously unknown agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus, emerged from Asia and spread rapidly throughout the Pacific Rim and beyond. Between November 2002 and July 2003, more than 8,000 people worldwide developed SARS, of which nearly 800 died. The SARS virus is spread primarily by droplet via person-to-person contact, although aerosol transmission may also play a role. The SARS outbreak was particularly problematic in Southeast Asia, as well as in Canada, where more than 200 cases were recorded in multiple provinces. In late July 2003, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the global outbreak to be over, although laboratory-associated infections have since occurred. While SARS is thought to have been eliminated from the human population, its significant case fatality rate (approximately 10 percent), and its ease of spread, warrant continued global surveillance.
New infectious agents continue to emerge. Over the past 30 years, dozens of previously unknown agents have been discovered. The nature of these newly emergent pathogens is varied, and in many cases is incompletely understood. Moreover, known pathogens can mutate to create new strains to which the human immune system is naïve or ill-adapted, and which do not respond to existing vaccines and pharmacological treatments. This scenario is common among influenza viruses, which undergo reassortment at random intervals, potentially producing pandemic strains capable of causing devastating disease.
For example, after the devastation of 1718, influenza pandemics occurred in 1957 and 1968, although they were less lethal than their 1718 predecessor. Today the world awaits the next such pandemic event. At present, there is heightening concern that a recently emergent avian influenza virus, A/H5N1, may have the potential to ignite the next influenza pandemic. Regardless of what happens with avian flu, the question is when, not if, the world will next experience pandemic influenza. Whether the next pandemic will unfold into a catastrophic event, akin to that of 1718, will depend on a variety of molecular, social, economic, medical, and public health factors.
On the darker side of human endeavor is the specter of biological warfare and bioterrorism, in which dangerous communicable agents can be spread either intentionally to human populations or agriculture. Although the Cold War superpowers did not engage in biological warfare, accidental infections have occurred among workers involved in weapons programs. Similarly, at least one catastrophic accidental release of a bio-warfare agent has been documented. Accidental infections with common pathogens have also occurred in research as well as public health laboratories. If terrorists, who almost certainly lack sophisticated laboratory infrastructure and advanced containment protocols, pursue bio-weapons, the world will likely be at risk for additional accidental releases, to say nothing of intentional attacks.
In addition to morbidity and mortality, the widespread propagation of disease can have devastating social and economic impacts. For example, the U.S. General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) reported that the SARS crisis “temporarily dampened consumer confidence in Asia, costing Asian economies $11 billion to $18 billion and resulting in estimated losses of 0.5 percent to 2 percent of total output, according to official and academic estimates. SARS had significant, but temporary, negative impacts on a variety of economic activities, especially travel and tourism. Moreover, in the modern world of international investment, economic losses in one region can affect performance in distant regions. For example, a number of U.S. companies suspect that they experienced quarterly losses in 2003 because of SARS.
The tremendous impact of the HIV/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) pandemic on African economies has been widely studied. Certainly, the impact has been complex; however, the pandemic has clearly tended to reduce labor supply and productivity while increasing the need for imports. Economic models suggest that HIV/AIDS will continue to have serious, long-term economic consequences throughout sub-Saharan Africa. These consequences pose a challenge to all nations, which must deal with reduced foreign markets and the increasing need for humanitarian outreach and international aid.
Emergent plant and animal diseases also affect economic and social institutions. In 2001, during the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the United Kingdom, agricultural producers suffered estimated losses of £355 million, or about 20 percent of the region's estimated total income from farming that year. Moreover, businesses directly affected by tourist expenditures lost an estimated £2.7-£3.2 billion as fewer people visited the countryside. Overall, the outbreak is estimated to have reduced the United Kingdom's gross domestic product by approximately 0.2 percent in 2001.
A variety of socio-economic factors encourage the spread of infection. Predating the Spanish flu pandemic by nearly three decades, the influenza pandemic of 1890 demonstrated that even by that the late 19th century, steamship and railroad travel had made the rapid, global propagation of pathogens possible. Since then, influenza pandemics have reached farther and wider as a result of advances in travel technology such as air transport, and on account of the global proliferation of traffic nodes.
The world is growing more crowded and more interconnected. Should any pathogen, such as influenza A/H5N1, emerge as a major threat to human health, it could spread rapidly throughout the globe. In 1718, the global population was approximately 1.8 billion; today it has surpassed 6 billion, and it is projected to be near 9 billion by 2050. This population increase has resulted in the phenomenon of megacities (cities with populations greater than 10 million). In 1960 there were two such cities; by 2000 the number had risen to 20 worldwide. The number of such cities projected for 2015 is 26, with 22 of them in developing nations and 18 in Asia alone.
Such high populations are likely to dramatically increase the opportunity for close-contact transmission of many pathogens, including diarrheal, respiratory, and foodborne agents, and to pose unique problems for rapid containment. This concern is particularly relevant for megacities in the poorest areas of the world, where problems of malnutrition and diminished immune status may be expected to grow. It can be expected that large populations will surpass the threshold numbers required to sustain as-yet undiscovered diseases. Measles, for example, did not become endemic until the size of human settlements surpassed about 250,000 inhabitants. It is not unreasonable to expect that newly emergent pathogens will gain footholds and thrive in our increasingly densely populated world.
The proliferation of air travel is also likely to facilitate the transmission of new pathogens. In 1990, 81 million passengers and 7.7 billion pounds of freight were exchanged between the United States and the rest of the world by air. By 2004, global air traffic had increased to 138 million passengers and more than 16 billion pounds of freight. In 1718 there was essentially no international air travel; today more than 18 million commercial flights serve virtually all areas of the world. It is currently possible to circumnavigate the globe in 36 hours via regularly scheduled commercial flights.
These statistics highlight two crucial epidemiological trends over the last few decades: (1) people are traveling more, and (2) travel times are dramatically shorter. Thus, larger numbers of individuals are traveling to areas where exotic and emerging pathogens circulate. Similarly, more people, living species, and agricultural commodities are crossing borders than ever before, increasing the likelihood that diseases previously confined to areas where populations have developed some immunity to the responsible pathogens will be introduced into immunologically naive populations. Moreover, once a new pathogen appears in any given area, it is increasingly likely to be spread globally via air travel within a matter of days. Under these combined circumstances, nations are likely to confront new infectious diseases as their citizens travel abroad and return. The effects of such easy disease transmission on international commerce could be enormous.
To preserve human health and economic well-being in this new context of dense populations and frequent air travel, there must be effective global surveillance of infectious diseases. Only through such surveillance will it be possible to prevent outbreaks from spreading throughout the world. The payoff from early warnings regarding infectious disease is well documented. Cases accumulate exponentially in the early phases of an epidemic until some degree of population immunity is achieved. At this point, new cases appear more slowly and eventually cease. If an epidemic is identified early, and effective control measures such as quarantine, immunization, and travel/trade embargos are instituted, the appearance of new cases slows, and ultimately ceases as the epidemic is brought under control. In such a scenario, morbidity and mortality are significantly lower than in the case with no early warning and no control. Under the best-case scenario, one with even earlier warning and action, action is taken earlier and the epidemic is brought under control shortly thereafter. Note that, because of the exponential character of epidemics, the tiniest bit of action taken at an early stage can dramatically alter the course of the disease; thus, illustrating the importance of early warning.
One international effort to facilitate early warning of dangerous infectious disease globally involves the International Health Regulations (IHRs; revised in May 2005). The IHRs have their origins in the cholera epidemics that affected Europe between 1830 and 1847. They are designed to “prevent, protect against, control and provide a public health response to the international spread of disease.” The regulations require member nations to notify WHO within 24 hours of finding a single case of any of the diseases on WHO's watch list, □ and to report other public health emergencies of “international concern” within their jurisdictions. Furthermore, the regulations set forth measures for deratting, disinfecting, and disinsecting international conveyances (such as ships and aircraft) at points of arrival and departure. Under the IHRs, nations are obligated to build “national capacity for routine preventive measures as well as to detect and respond to public health emergencies of international concern. These routine measures include public health actions at ports, airports, land borders and for means of transport that use them to travel internationally.” Thus the IHRs embody the public health maxim that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” However, not all nations have the capacity to detect such diseases within their own borders. Moreover, in some instances, governments may suppress information relating to outbreaks that could lead to adverse economic consequences (such as embargoes on potentially infected products, or reduced tourism).
At the international level, there are both official and unofficial mechanisms for international disease notification. The primary means of official notification resides with WHO's Global Alert and Response Network (GOARN), a global network of WHO member states, United Nations organizations, and partner nongovernmental organizations that respond to the needs of member states in crisis due to epidemic disease. Standardized protocols for network structure, operations, and communications have been agreed upon in an effort to improve coordination among the GOARN partners. WHO provides institutional support for the network (such as employment of project managers and support for the steering committee) and coordinates international outbreak response using network resources.
One of the services GOARN maintains is the Canadian-based Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN), which scans global media articles via the Internet for references to disease outbreaks and epidemics. In May 2003, partly in response to the SARS crisis, WHO began formally utilizing the information sources searched by GPHIN, in conjunction with government reports, to issue global disease alerts.
Unofficial notification occurs via many means, such as the Program of Monitoring Emerging Diseases (ProMED), a moderated Internet mailing list that tracks emerging infections of humans, plants, and animals. Currently a program of the International Society for Infectious Diseases (ISID) and, therefore, not bound by multilateral agreements, ProMED does not require an official mandate to post and disseminate information. Rather, it relies on volunteers from around the world to submit information about infectious diseases and related issues. Much, though not all, of this information consists of media articles. Submitted material is vetted by a group of experts so that only the most relevant and credible information is displayed.
The GPHIN utilizes the international connectivity of the Internet to help detect disease. However, at present, it is limited by the volume and type of media material that can be processed in multiple languages. Additional limitations affect WHO's ability to detect and assess a rapidly spreading epidemic, including the lack of adequate public health infrastructure in member nations, the potential involvement of a previously uncharacterized pathogen (as in the case of SARS), ongoing conflict that inhibits the flow of information out of nations, and the willingness of states to report the extent of an outbreak.
Likewise, while ProMED and similar networks are valuable complements to official sources, their volunteer nature limits the number of staff available to process the volume of submitted reports. Similarly, such networks tend to have limited resources to support language translation issues. In concert, these limitations compromise the ability of volunteer networks to provide comprehensive early warning of potential outbreaks.
The limitations described above highlight differences between raw medical surveillance data and the translation of those data into actionable threat information. During the initial stages of an outbreak, very little may be known about an event. As time progresses, this uncertainty typically decreases, though it may do so slowly. On the other hand, the probability of translocation to other areas tends to increase with time. The key public health question is, when should action be taken to reduce risk? There are many choices. The time at which preventive actions are taken will be a function of medical as well as social, political, and economic factors. Nonetheless, actionable information acts to decrease uncertainty and can provide a strong rationale for early measures to minimize the likelihood of translocation.
For example, the VEE epidemic represents a possible translocation issue for the U.S. given air traffic from Maracaibo, Venezuela, connected directly to Miami (with unknown connector flights to other destinations within the U.S.) that seasonally peaked during the month of containment loss. To-date, it is unknown whether it would have been possible that VEE could translocate to Miami, trigger an outbreak that progressed to an epidemic, ecological establishment, and repeated seasonal transmission thereafter for years to come. A comprehensive assessment of the transmission competency of endemic mosquito species in Miami would be necessary to determine if this was a valid hazard concern.
In 1979, a laboratory accident involving aerosolized anthrax occurred in Sverdlovsk, Russia. From April 14-May 18, 1979, local media in Sverdlovsk explicitly reported the occurrence of a series of human cases of inhalation anthrax along with draconian countermeasures as officials sought to rapidly contain and conceal the true etiology of the event. In 1992 and 1993, a team of American and Russian researchers led by Meselson and colleagues traveled to Sverdlovsk to investigate evidence for two hypotheses of the anthrax epidemic of 1979, the official USSR version that infected meat caused the outbreak and the US intelligence claims that the true etiology of the epidemic was an accidental release of aerosolized anthrax spores from the Compound 19 within the Voyenny Gorodok 47 biological weapons laboratory located in the city. The Meselson team concluded that an accidental aerosol release had indeed occurred on Apr. 2, 1979, resulting in what is thought to be the largest documented outbreak of human inhalation anthrax in history. Declassified U.S. intelligence archives suggest the intelligence community was unaware of this event until months after the fact.
This example highlights the requirement for a tactical approach to detect biological events and to baseline not only the epidemiological data for the disease itself, but social responses as well. Identifying “unusual” biological events that are evolving rapidly, with an attendant recurrence, elevation, and diversification of the indications and warnings, may assist in a time-sensitive evaluation of whether there may be a question of attribution. Of particular note, through retrospective and prospective studies, it has been known that an indicator of intentional release is not often the first apparent tip to an analyst; rather, it is the identification of an “unusual” biological event that is later found to be related to suspicious conditions.
In each of those examples, the biological event in question produced a “ripple effect” whereby indications and warnings (I&Ws) appeared in media. The analyst is in a struggle against time to put pieces together to tell enough of a coherent story to alert the user community to awareness. To properly capture events and triage advisories appropriately, a blended I&Ws reporting requirement list that incorporates an integrated disease list has been developed.
At a workshop sponsored by the U.S. Army in 2004, entitled “The Role of Indications and Warnings for Prediction and Surveillance of Catastrophic Biological Events,” a panel of researchers concluded that decision making could be strengthened by using a graded threat awareness scale that corresponds to varying levels of confidence in the potential for a given disease to spread. However, neither the newly revised WHO Pandemic Phases nor the Canadian or U.S. governments' current concepts of how to respond to pandemic influenza provide specific guidance for cross-matching actionable threat information to response decisions. Such a scale could support a graded response to imperfectly known threats.
Researchers have recently investigated the use of local-level syndromic surveillance to anticipate reports of clinically confirmed disease. The basic idea is to target the early manifestations of disease as they are presented to health care workers. Whether syndromic surveillance is likely to detect an epidemic sooner than the usual methods (such as reporting by alert clinicians) is unclear. Nonetheless, the underlying concept of discerning peri-event signatures that are indicative of disease transmission may prove useful in initiating more traditional epidemiological investigations at earlier points in the life of a disease.
Panelists at the 2004 I&W workshop concluded that there may be observable social, economic, and political signatures of the early stages of large-scale biological events. If such signatures could be used to cue confirmatory epidemiological investigations, it might be possible to identify and contain outbreaks days or weeks before current approaches are able to do so. Thus, these I&Ws may have the potential to identify an epidemic in its early stages, thereby allowing for more effective control and prevention of its regional or international spread. Conference attendees published their proceedings in 2004, which included postulating use of the Internet to gather documents containing I&Ws for event detection purposes.
No single approach can achieve that goal. Rather, a combination of approaches is necessary to reduce risk and support decision making that is meant to mitigate the translocation of biological threats. It is posited that at least two approaches can be combined to create a global I&W system that meets the goals of early detection. The first is environmental surveillance for ecological markers of conditions supporting disease emergence. In many areas of the world, environmental conditions are known to play a key role in the emergence of certain infectious agents, especially vectorborne pathogens. Satellite sensors can monitor environmental conditions (such as vegetation health, rainfall, and standing water) over large areas, and the risk of disease emergence can be assessed based on those observations. Static or seasonal maps of areas that are ecologically suitable for disease emergence or transmission, coupled with maps of transportation routes for different disease hosts (such as humans and livestock) and vectors, may prove useful in the short term. Longer-term, more sophisticated systems that collect and update such data, then make it available for analysis, are needed.
The second approach is to monitor the Internet for markers of “social disruption” that indicate anomalous infectious activity. Both adaptive and maladaptive social responses to disease epidemics have been studied previously. McGrath (1991) examined the historical ethnographies of 229 ethnic groups from North and South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Russia, and Oceania, and recorded six basic social responses to epidemics: mass evacuation or flight from the site of the epidemic, extraordinary therapeutic or preventive measures, scapegoating of individuals or institutions, acceptance of disease, ostracism of the ill, and conflict. Of these, flight was found to be the most common. McGrath noted that the acute, dramatic appearance of disease, particularly unfamiliar disease, with high rates of morbidity and mortality provoked the strongest social response. McGrath observed that if established indigenous countermeasures failed, innovative countermeasures were undertaken, followed by social disruption that began with flight, then proceeded to acceptance of disease, to rejection of authorities, and ultimately to conflict. This sequence, McGrath argued, depicts a society that has degraded from normal functional status to disintegration. It is inferred that social disruption may be characterized as an emergent property triggered by a biological threat that defies countermeasures, control, and containment.
The near-global coverage of the Internet has led to highly fluid formal and informal reporting of local and regional news and events relating to social disruptions. Such reports contain information about the collective behavior of communities, which in turn can provide implicit or explicit information on the health of peoples. That approach promises to become even more comprehensive as the Internet continues to expand its reach. The use of the Internet for that purpose was described in a NASA open source reader in 1998.
Both approaches—monitoring the environment for ecological markers of conditions supporting disease emergence, and monitoring the Internet for markers of “social disruption” that indicate anomalous infectious activity—are supported by advances in information technology. For example, multisource data mining, machine learning, and language translation algorithms are now available to expand upon the GPHIN approach of exploiting published media reports. Similarly, remote sensing of many types of relevant environmental conditions is now possible at low or no cost over the Internet. Moreover, computer modeling and simulation can be used for analysis. For example, the Soviet Union developed computer models that successfully tracked the nationwide spread of influenza. Later, the approach was used retrospectively to analyze the 1968-69 pandemic of influenza A/H3N2. Recent research suggests that such a tool, together with up-to-date data on transportation and human movement, could be used to examine optimal control strategies early in an epidemic. Transportation network analysis, an active area of research, is necessary for understanding the relationship between global connectivity and infectious disease threats.
A global I&W system represents only one tool in the armamentarium of ways to address the threats posed by infectious disease. Knowing that a potentially threatening biological event is under way somewhere in the world is a necessary condition for mitigating its effects, but it is not sufficient. The social, economic, and political context of the threat will determine how it can be controlled. It may be useful to think of infectious disease threats in the same way we think of meteorological threats. In the United States, the National Weather Service operates a warning system for severe weather. It is generally acknowledged that this system is important and worth maintaining and improving, but knowing that severe weather is threatening a particular area at a particular time is not sufficient to save lives; people must use the information to that end. Such is the case with infectious disease, as well.
Nonetheless, early warnings of infectious disease threats remain a pillar of public health and national biodefense decision making, especially in the face of current world trends in transportation, commerce, and population. A global I&W system would be broadly applicable to natural, accidental, and terrorist-induced outbreaks of human and agricultural diseases. Any such tool would facilitate more informed decision making and thus would help mitigate the international spread of infectious disease.
It is necessary to have a balance between rapid identification and interdiction of state and non-state sponsored biological weapons programs, and recognition that a Spanish flu of 1718 scenario may severely incapacitate a country's infrastructure, to include its national defenses. It has traditionally been the view held by some that pandemic influenza is a public health, not intelligence concern. The creation of Homeland Security Presidential Directives-7, -9, and -10; National Security Presidential Directive-33; and now Public Law 110-53 have attempted to resolve this debate and place intelligence within the context of a national biosurveillance integration strategy for biological defense. The operational reality is that a biological event effecting humans or animals may translocate from any place in the world to any other place before adequate ground truth and attribution assessment can occur due to the substantial global transportation and commerce grid.
Topical and geographic focus, as has been observed in agencies such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), has been typically stove-piped within specialty programs that do not readily share information with other programs. A global picture of situational awareness that spans all attribution concern has not been available either at the intra- or inter-departmental level sufficient to operate in the new global operations environment that demands a rapid event detection-to-ground truth cycle. Determination of attribution is often a time-sensitive forensic process, as evidenced by the activities of Aum Shynrikyo, the Rajnessh cult, Japan Unit 731, South Africa's Project Coast, and the immense former Soviet Union biological weapons program. Coupling near-real time I&Ws to traditional epidemiological approaches and intelligence is a critical need in today's global community.
The intelligence community faces several issues that may present themselves similarly in an I&W detection and tracking environment:                Naturally occurring biological events of high potential consequence to the U.S. and its allies (e.g., pandemic influenza);        Accident of biotechnology producing a biological event of high potential consequence to the U.S. and its allies (e.g., accidental reintroduction of pandemic influenza virus that has not been in global circulation for decades such as the appearance of H1N1 in 1977);        Accident of state or non-state sponsored biological weapons program resulting in a biological event of high potential consequence to the U.S. and its allies (e.g., hypothetical laboratory accident involving terrorists that releases a respiratory virus that transmits efficiently in the surrounding community);        Intentional test release of a pathogen by a state or non-state sponsored biological weapons program resulting in a biological event of high potential consequence to the U.S. and its allies (e.g., terrorist group performs a limited field test with a respiratory virus that transmits efficiently in the surrounding community); or        Intentional deployment of a biological weapon by a state or non-state sponsored program (e.g., terrorists deliberately release plague in an urban area).        
Other issues of importance include rapid identification and monitoring of suspected state or non-state programs that may be associated with named individuals or institutions.
There are different time differentials, sensitivities, and specificities associated with the spectrum of products involving rapid processing of I&Ws versus a finished assessment.
I&Ws have long been used in intelligence. In World War II, one effective indicator of the success of Allied bombing raids on the French railroads was the price of oranges in Paris: successful raids disrupted transportation of the fruits (from southern France to the capital city) sufficiently to cause a transient price spike. In biological surveillance, one family of indirect indicators is based on observations of other, “sentinel” species that serve as alternative hosts for an infectious agent or are exposed to the same pathogen to a relatively greater extent. Historically, a plague epidemic was heralded by the appearance of numerous dead rodents: the fleas that spread the disease among them would now move to another source of blood (human hosts). Human methyl-mercury poisoning in Japan (Minamata disease) was preceded by neurological symptoms in cats that ate contaminated fish, and bird deaths are monitored during surveillance for West Nile fever. Other indicators are more remote, in that the causal links are less obvious given the state of existing knowledge. Edward Jenner's work on vaccination was triggered by his exploration of the old wives' tale that milkmaids rarely got smallpox. It turned out that, after they were infected with cowpox from the animals they milked, they acquired immunity to the smallpox pathogen.
Today's researchers, unlike their counterparts of the past, have near real-time access to vast amounts of different types of data. The technologies grouped under the rubric “data mining” enable researchers to plow through data to generate a vast number of hypotheses in a prioritized fashion. Offset against that advantage are the following caveats:                Few data mining techniques are associated with tests of statistical significance: a suggested hypothesis does not usually come with a “p-value.”        An observed relationship between an indirect indicator and the pathogen does not, in the absence of additional knowledge, imply cause or effect. Further, because of the problem of confounding variables, the factors that may be predictors may turn out not to be so. That problem has been known since the devising of the Pearson correlation coefficient in the early 20th century. Two variables that were apparently highly correlated were found to be associated only because of a third unconsidered variable. The spurious association reported by Huff between the salaries of Presbyterian ministers in Massachusetts and the price of rum in Havana (with the common variable being inflation) is an example of this problem. Thus, indirect indicators may not always reflect cause-and-effect relationships.        Given finite resources, the number of hypotheses that one would like to explore is always far greater than the number of hypotheses that one can explore.        
Previous investigators have attempted to define event evolution as a function of media reporting. Cieri and colleagues (1802) proposed that an event be defined as “a specific thing that happens at a specific time and place along with all necessary pre-conditions and unavoidable consequences.” Makkonen (2003) observed that a seminal event can lead to various related events and outcomes, and the initial cause of these events may become less obvious over time. Chin and colleagues proposed that a media-reported event can be considered “a life form with stages of birth, growth, decay, and death,” and that the maintenance of the reported event is dependent on sensationalism. Those analyses, however, did not identify variable properties of media reports that are potentially useful as indirect measures of the intensification of I&Ws over time: recurrence, elevation, and diversification. By these measures, biological events may be reported as increasingly complex phenomena over time, whose “nourishment” is dependent on whether the biological agent in question is perceived by the local community to remain an active threat of concern.
What is needed is a system and method for facilitating disease reporting that covers regions of the world where there is poor or nonexistent disease reporting infrastructure. What is also needed is a system and method that provides situational awareness of biological events, especially epidemics of infectious disease in regions where such information is suppressed, and newly-emergent pathogen events where the pathogen has unknown characteristics. What is also needed is a system and method to detect and respond to a pandemic that is transparent, facilitates scientific cooperation, and allows for rapid reporting of biological outbreaks in birds and humans.
In the summer of 2004, an allocation of funds from the Intelligence Technology Innovation Center (ITIC) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was made available to support research and development of a completely novel approach in foreign biosurveillance: Project Argus (now Global Argus), which is a real-world embodiment of the presently disclosed invention.
Though biosurveillance has been a concern, others have been concerned with situational awareness of non-biological events. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Reuters Foundation, International Crisis Group, International Relations and Security Network, Virtual Research Associates (VRA), and European Media Monitor are examples of organizations that coordinate the collection and dissemination of information about events unfolding around the world or in particular regions or counties. Numerous theoretic models for early warning have been used, including the Minorities at Risk Project, PIOOM, and the State Failure Project. Conflict prevention scholars have performed comparative analyses of the typology, methodologies and effectiveness of these models.
Previous methodologies are disadvantaged in that they do not update hourly or even daily in some cases, do not combine rigorous baseline methodology with advanced searching and reporting criteria, do not use thousands of sources and multi-language search capability, do not utility regional, cultural, and language experts as filters to interpret data, do not use a tested taxonomy that categorizes events and provides insight into the significance and magnitude of an event, do not use multiple layers of event analysis and description, and do not use interactive visualization tools.